WarGod

by Steven Savile

  Octavian shook his head as if Labienus had missed the point. “But there are none alive, save yourself, who know the truth of what you were doing? No one else knows about the sword?”

  “None, lord.” Labienus did not have to consider this for even a moment. Secrecy had been paramount, and not just because of the fear that enemies might try to take the sword from them. Labienus still recalled why Julius Caesar had denied him permission to retrieve the sword after losing it to Nennius ten years earlier. They will believe it is the sword that has conquered them, not the man who wields it.

  That dictum held true for Octavian as well, perhaps more so, for unlike his predecessor, he had not yet proven himself as a leader of men.

  Caesar had also said something else. It’s only a sword.

  That, Labienus knew, had been a lie.

  But it didn’t matter.

  He had accomplished the mission and he wanted nothing more than to return home. Perhaps Octavian would reward him—at the very least, he hoped his banishment would be at an end—but right now, all that mattered was being rid of the infernal burden.

  He held the sword out, presenting it to Octavian.

  And that was when he experienced the premonition again.

  Octavian noticed it as well. “You’ve seen this moment before?”

  Labienus nodded. “Just before we were attacked.” He had not described the premonition in detail, fearing that Octavian would think him mad, but now the omission was irrelevant.

  Octavian closed his hand around the hilt and slowly drew the sword from its sheath. Even in the darkness, it was a glorious thing. Truly, a thing of beauty. It felt like an extension of his arm, his spirit coursing out through his hand into the metal, joining them.

  “Caesar spoke often of this,” Octavian said, gazing upon the naked blade. “The Sword of Mars. The man who wields it cannot be defeated in battle. It warns when danger or treachery is at hand.”

  Labienus gaze darted past Octavian, into the darkness where the Praetorian Guard waited. “Is there danger here, lord?”

  “Of a sort. The danger that comes when one’s weaknesses are exposed. The gods will guide me to victory; I will become imperator. Then, I will build a temple in their honour to guard gifts such as this. But no one can know that I owe my victories to it.”

  “No one will ever learn of it from me,” Labienus assured him.

  “I know.” Octavian smiled and then thrust the sword through Labienus’ heart.

  PART TWO: THE SWORD OF MARS

  11 Daughter

  Now, Saint Albans—2216 UTC

  THEY SLIPPED AWAY from the cathedral just as the local police began arriving on the scene. They made their way into town on foot, moving quickly. They didn’t talk. The hired VW was abandoned. They didn’t steal a car; doing so would only tip their hand when it was found. They didn’t want anyone knowing where they’d gone. So for the second time that night the anonymity of public transport would help them make their escape.

  They had emerged from the cathedral filthy, bedraggled, and in Frost’s case, bleeding from the wound to his left bicep. The first order of business was cleaning up. Frost’s injury wasn’t bad, at least in his own estimation—he’d certainly suffered worse—but a trail of blood would attract attention. After meandering through residential neighbourhoods, putting nearly three kilometres between themselves and the cathedral, they found an all night chemist. Denison went in alone to buy some clothes and first aid supplies, while Lili and Frost stayed outside, concealed by the shadows.

  Frost struggled out of his jacket and began gingerly peeling his shirt, sticky with drying blood, away from the wound. Seeing his difficulty, Lili took over. She had a delicate touch, but did not seem too squeamish, even when the wound reopened.

  “Sorry,” she murmured.

  “No worries.” The pain was nowhere near intolerable. One didn’t come up through the Paras and the SAS without learning how to deal with a few cuts and bruises. It was a through and through. It had barely clipped the meat. It’d need stitching, but that could wait.

  On the wrong side....

  Frost believed that Denison was being honest, but couldn’t shake the nagging feeling he wasn’t saying everything.

  As he watched Lili carry his ruined shirt over to a street corner rubbish bin, it occurred to him that he hadn’t really had a chance to talk to her at all. They’d been running pretty much from the moment they’d met and on any subject unrelated to ancient history, she seemed about as talkative as a lamppost.

  “Some night,” he said. As icebreakers went it wasn’t particularly sophisticated, but it beat spelling it out gunshot by gunshot. “You holding up?”

  She shrugged. “This is not the first time someone has tried to kill me.”

  “I imagine your father made some enemies when he decided to support the NATO intervention.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she looked away. “My father’s actions during the war were...shameful.”

  Touched a nerve.

  Frost recalled that Kristijan Pavic’s trial in the World Court was nearly finished. Closing arguments had already been made, and the verdict was expected within the week. Odd that she’s with Tony, looking for some rusty old relic, and not at her father’s side, he realised.

  “I’ve followed his trial. For what it’s worth, I believe he’ll be found not guilty.”

  “Not guilty?” She made no effort to hide her contempt. “He is absolutely guilty. Guilty of betraying his people; choosing to protect our enemies and work with—” Her nose wrinkled in disgust as she nodded at Frost— “foreigners interfering where they had no business.”

  Frost said nothing.

  Lili was angry with her father for not doing the things of which he’d been accused.

  She was angry that he’d worked with NATO to stop the bloodshed.

  The implications of that appalled him.

  Hadn’t she seen the mass graves where thousands of ethnic Albanians had been massacred and covered over by bulldozers?

  Didn’t she feel anything for the women and girls who had been raped and brutalised as part of a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing?

  But part of him understood.

  He had grown up surrounded by people whose convictions left them with a completely altered sense of reality. It wasn’t hatred. It was deeper, darker, than that.

  “If you feel that way, why are you working with Tony?”

  “Don’t mistake me; I have no anger toward him, or you for that matter; you were soldiers following orders.” Despite the evident passion she felt for the subject, Lili’s tone had lost some of its fire. She managed to regain some of her composure and was quickly her prickly self again. When she continued, she sounded less like a true believer and more like a history professor giving a lecture. “Did your superiors tell you who you were protecting? The Kosovo Liberation Army were terrorists. Your government accused the Serbs of ethnic cleansing; do you know what the KLA was trying to accomplish? An ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo. They attacked, raped and massacred Serbs, Romanies...anyone who was not Albanian. They used children as soldiers. They trafficked in narcotics, even sold the organs of their prisoners to raise money for their war. But who did your government choose to support? The KLA. Because of politics. Because it was convenient. And that is why I am working with Tony. It is convenient.”

  That stopped Frost. “Convenient? I know what Tony is after—or what he says he’s after; so what’s your angle?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I am an historian. Classical Rome is my area of expertise. Isn’t that enough?”

  Frost shrugged. “Hardly. Not in my world. It might explain your interest, but not why you were so eager to play Lara Croft tonight.”

  Her lip curled in something that might have been a smile in another life. “When that man attacked us in the parking garage, I realised the urgency of the situation.”

  Frost wasn’t convinced.

  He shook his head.

  He
recalled how, following their rendezvous at Heathrow, she—not Denison—had insisted that they proceed immediately to Saint Albans.

  But before he could call bullshit on her, Denison returned, bearing his purchases: souvenir T-shirts to at least partially camouflage their soiled and battered condition; antiseptic and bandages for Frost’s arm; and a disposable pre-paid burner phone. Frost would need the latter to arrange for one of his contacts to supply them with forged travelling papers.

  “It is ironic really,” Lili continued as she continued tending to Frost’s wound. “The sword being in Rome. I was so very close to it and didn’t even know it.”

  Denison raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

  “What makes you so sure it’s there? I can accept that they came back and stole it from that tomb, but getting it out of the country couldn’t have been easy. And you said yourself that, until you found that first letter, there was no evidence the sword even existed. Maybe it’s just gone? Lost on the way back to Rome. Even if they got it off the mainland, their ship could have sunk...the sword could be lying on the bottom of the Channel for all we know.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t understand the politics of the time. The proof is in Octavian’s success. Here was a man thought by his peers to be pliable...even weak. And yet through a combination of military and political cunning, he succeeded in becoming Rome’s first and I would say, greatest emperor.”

  “He was Caesar’s son; maybe it was in his blood.”

  Lili shook her head. “No. Octavian wasn’t related to Julius Caesar by blood. He was formally adopted after Caesar’s assassination in order to legally establish his position as Caesar’s heir. It is true that Caesar may have seen something in the boy, and he certainly would have cultivated the qualities necessary to someday rule an empire, but I think Octavian had something else.”

  “A magic sword that established his divine right to rule?” Frost glanced over at Denison as he said it, and saw his old friend nodding thoughtfully.

  “In this case, it’s the truth. The Crocea Mors was said to be the sword of the god Mars. With that sword in his possession, and a promise to place it in a magnificent temple dedicated to Mars, Octavian would have gained the support of the priests of the war god, which in turn would have given him considerable influence with the legions. This may even explain why Marc Antony was willing to set aside his own ambitions in order to share power with Octavian.”

  “Lili,” Denison interjected. “You said that you were very close to the sword without realising it; what did you mean by that?”

  “I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Augustus. I spent a great deal of time at historical sites related to Rome’s first emperor. The Musei Capitolini—the Capitoline Museum—has an extensive collection of artefacts from the Augustine Forum where the Temple of Mars Ultor was located.”

  “And the sword is there? In a museum?” Frost felt his ire rising. After everything they had gone through, the possibility that the object of their search might actually be in a climate controlled display case in a well-lit conservatory in a modern city made him feel used.

  Then Lili took a deep breath, like a doctor about to give an ailing patient a terminal diagnosis. “It’s not that simple. I’ll explain everything when we get there. I promise.”

  12 The Impossible

  Nonesuch Manor—2249 UTC

  Sir Charles jabbed a finger down on the speaker button as soon the caller id came up on the display. When he spoke, it was with an air of practiced calm that was decidedly at odds with his present mood. “Konstantin, my boy. So good of you to finally check in. Would you care to debrief us?”

  The question was almost sincere. Sir Charles knew exactly where Khavin was; Lethe had tracked the Russian’s mobile south through London, where it had disappeared for more than half an hour, only to reappear in Calais. More to the point, he knew what the big Russian had been doing, too, but he wanted to give him the chance to explain his actions.

  “I was looking into something,” Konstantin answered.

  “Ah. And were you successful in your endeavours?”

  “I believe so. I am following up on it now.” Konstantin said, steering carefully away from the subject. “Is there any word from Frost?”

  Sir Charles grimaced, glad it wasn’t a video phone, and kept his tone neutral. “He is also ‘looking into something.’”

  “I see.”

  There was a maddening pause, and Sir Charles finally cracked: “Damn it, Konstantin, you’re the one who called me. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what you need.” When Khavin did not immediately relent, Sir Charles took a different tack. “There was a disturbance at Clarendon House tonight.”

  “Yes?”

  “Some chap claiming to be a police inspector assaulted one of the members of the protection retinue assigned to a certain royal highness.”

  “That takes some audacity.”

  “Indeed it does. The police circulated a photograph of the assailant, captured from CCTV inside Clarendon, but as of now no one is quite sure who he is.”

  Konstantin waited for more. When it didn’t come he asked: “Do you want me to look into it?”

  “No need. Shortly after the word went out, Clarendon House advised the police that it was a false alarm. It’s as if the incident never happened.”

  “Convenient.” Khavin let out a sigh.

  “Indeed. So why have you called?”

  “I need information on David Habersham.”

  Sir Charles nodded across the room to Lethe, who was already running a search. A list of hits flashed on the plasma screen monitor mounted on the wall. “Too wide a search,” Sir Charles muttered.

  “Limit it to British subjects. Possible nationalist connections. Last known location most likely the Netherlands.”

  Sir Charles nodded absently at the last comment. Now he understood why Khavin was in France. He’d taken the train under the channel, and was probably even now waiting for a connection to take him up to the Netherlands. The Russian didn’t fly if he could help it. And border control in Europe was so lax with the Schengen agreement in place now. You could ride from the boot of Italy into the Arctic Circle and down through the Low Countries into England without showing any ID until you hit mainland Britain.

  The screen refreshed and instead of countless results returning leads in different directions, Sir Charles saw that all of the hits referred to a single man: David Ambrose Habersham. Born in Cardiff. Dividing his time between a modern London condominium on the Isle of Dogs and a country villa near The Hague in the Netherlands. Habersham was the president of GreenWave Enterprises, a leading researcher into alternative energy production, and in that capacity had become both an advisor and a close personal friend of a certain member of the royal family—the two men had been photographed together on numerous occasions—leaving little question in Sir Charles’ mind that this was the man Khavin was looking for.

  “Send it to him,” Sir Charles said, with a nod to Lethe. Then he continued in a louder voice. “Can I take it that you have found a connection between Mr Habersham and the Four Evangelists?”

  “It’s only hearsay at this point. Certainly not enough to exonerate Denison, or clear Frost.”

  Sir Charles hid his disappointment, if only from Lethe. “Keep at it. And Koni...while I do thank you for trying to insulate me from your ah, endeavours, tonight, please don’t do anything like that ever again. It’s going to take Mr Lethe a month of Sundays to get your likeness out of the Secret Service database now.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about, Sir,” Khavin replied and killed the connection.

  The old man continued to stare at the monitor, wondering if this new discovery would be the thread to lead them out of the labyrinth, or another maddening false trail.

  “Habersham is on Six’s watch list,” Lethe said.

  The old man would trust Khavin’s instincts on this, although that didn’t make him feel any less helpless. And he hated fee
ling helpless more than anything; it was a consequence of the fact he was bound to the wheelchair now. In his mind he could still walk like a giant. He was still waiting for the fallout from the Russian’s brazen intrusion at Clarendon House. They’d obviously identified him as the intruder; that Carruthers hadn’t already set the phone lines on fire was ominous, to say the least.

  At least the GPS signal from Frost’s mobile had gone dark—his last known location, Saint Albans. There were conflicting reports of a bomb blast and a shooting, and at least three dead though none of the victims matched the descriptions for Frost or Denison. So Frost knew he’d been cut loose. The old man hoped to Christ it was enough of a head start to keep him alive.

  And Nonesuch was clean.

  He had followed Carruthers’ orders explicitly, cutting Frost off from all communication. With Frost gone dark it was inevitable that the man from Vauxhall Cross would come around again, this time demanding that they set the dogs on one of their own.

  He wasn’t looking forward to the confrontation, and he would refuse of course.

  Frost was better than good. Finding him, even if he were inclined to do so, would be as good as impossible.

  And yet....

  Despite what Control had said, Frost was in the best position to investigate Denison, and if necessary, take appropriate action, and Sir Charles did not doubt the Irishman’s ability to put duty ahead of friendship. Not for a second.

  But that was secondary: Frost needed to know that he wasn’t on his own.

  Not now, not ever.

  “Enough,” the old man rumbled. “Mr Lethe, I have a new task for you.”

  “Lay it on me.”

  “Ronan needs to know what we have learned. You must find a way to make contact and I don’t care how you do it short of starting a war and even then I might not complain too loudly if it gets the job done.” Carruthers’ threat echoed in his mind. If you interfere, you’re finished. Ogmios is finished. “But it would be good if you could do so in a manner that cannot be traced back to us.”